COUNTRY MUSIC MADE ME DO IT - An old truck goes home after 50 years

Impulse is a real thing. I don’t know how else to explain it so I’ll just tell you what I’m doing. Late one night, I was cruising the online classified sites when it hit me. 2 tone sea foam blue over white paint with 50 years of patina on it - probably the best looking truck I have ever seen. It was over at that point, it was equal parts beautiful and attainable. I didn’t hesitate. I called the owner the next day and bought it- a 1968 Ford F100 with the bullet proof straight 6 and a four speed manual transmission. Perfect, I was the owner of a sweet truck of an era I could work on myself. Only problem is its 4000 km away on the West coast of Canada.

After I bought it, I hadn’t seen it and wouldn’t for about five months. In my room in Toronto, I did some research on the VIN and found that he truck had been assembled in Oakville Ontario. Wild, we’re driving her home! I mean kind of, British Columbia will always be her home. It’s where she spent her life as a farm hand hauling stuff on an orchard 5 km from the US border. She’s headed for the complete opposite now. I like cars, I am a car guy, whatever that means. This will be my first truck and I’m pretty excited.

The owner is a man named Uli who was the second owner of the truck. He wanted to find it a good home because he knew it still had a ton of life left in it. It’s old, it’s pretty clean says the mechanic, which I don’t doubt because it lives in BC, the land of rust free metal. It has a notoriously bulletproof engine that was used for 30+ years in these trucks.

Important to note that Truck can’t always go Google suggested speed limits

I’m currently in Vancouver writing this to you and I know impulse had a big part of what drove me to buy this truck, sight unseen (I still haven’t laid eyes on it). But the truth is there is something else that pushed me to buy this gem. It’s country music. Ever since I was a kid my Dad would play tons of Outlaw Country - Waylon, Willie, Johnny Paycheck, George Jones, all of it would come on the stereo Friday night on the way to the cottage or on a Saturday morning when it would be used as an alarm clock to let us know it was time for chores. The line from Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys by Waylon Jennings is burned in my mind- “don’t let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks…”. Some how these two things are linked for me.

Here we go, across this unbelievably big and beautiful country. I just know its full of trucks. Feel free to give a listen here to some songs to drive a truck to and follow me and my buddy Don as we drive 4200km clean across Canada, back to where we are from and where truck was first born.